On national signing day Wednesday, Stony Brook officially signed Chris Braley out of Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire to a national letter of intent.
Braley, a native of Newport, Maine, verbally committed to Stony Brook earlier this year in February.
“It feels great,” Braley said. “Now that it is official, it just makes me more excited to get down there for summer school and for the start of the school year.”
Pikiell said he first saw Braley practice during the previous summer at Phillips Exeter, as well with his AAU team, the Middlesex Magic, and took an immediate liking to him. He thinks that the 6-foot-4-inch, 195 lbs. swingman could develop into an all-conference caliber player for the Seawolves.
“He’s tough as nails, shoots the heck out of it, and plays multiple positions just to name a few things,” Pikiell said. “He’s a great student; he comes from a great family.”
Braley was a key player for Phillips-Exeter this past season and one of the top players in the New England Prep School Athletic Conference. This past season, he averaged 15 points per game and nine rebounds per game on his way to first-team All-NEPSAC Class A honors as well as leading Phillips-Exeter to its first-ever NEPSAC Class A championship.
“It was about as good a year as we could have had,” Braley said. “We upset a lot of teams that people thought we shouldn’t of, but we knew we were good enough and I never went into a game thinking we could lose.”
Prior to Phillips-Exeter, Braley played three years at Nokomis High School in Maine, where he was a 1,000 point scorer. He averaged 25.5 points per game and 12.7 rebounds per game in his final season there before transferring.
Braley will be joining a roster filled with depth. While the team will graduate four players, he will likely be competing for playing time off the bench with freshman guards Ryan Burnett and Ahmad Walker, who both red-shirted this year, as well as another freshman guard, Kameron Mitchell, who joined the team during the second half of the season.
“Ultimately, it’s going to be hard performing, how coach Pikiell sees me fitting into the team dynamics,” Braley said.
Braley is the second player to officially join Stony Brook’s 2013 recruiting class, joining Roland Nyama, a 6-foot-5-inch German forward out of Holderness High School in New Hampshire. With Mitchell getting a scholarship for next year, Stony Brook has one more scholarship to give out.
“A good player that fits Stony Brook,” Pikiell said when asked what he plans to do with that scholarship. “I don’t have to get any particular position.”
